Innovative Future Web Design

Actinic have released their latest report into Ecommerce. It reveals some interesting figures regarding ecommerce which I’ve summarised below.

Essentially Ecommerce “etailer’s” now benefit from significant increases in profitability after a number of years of stability. Ecommerce is also now seen to be significantly cheaper and web designers are now being sought after to build online stores for their clients. However only one in 10 retailers has a “transactional” website (i.e. one that can take online payments) and of those retailers
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It’s the season of goodwill and giving so Joomlashack is holding a competition for their customers and visitors to their site to nominate a charity an eligible charity to win a free Joomlashack Custom Website or US$1000 cash. I’m sure people would tell me not to promote other web designers but in the spirit of the competition, the season and the open source community which Joomla is part of I have to give this gesture a mention.

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For a long time you’d have needed to don a hard hat and duck behind the sofa if you asked any self respecting web designer what they thought of the Micro$oft home page as they launch into a rant about Web Standards, code validation, tableless code and best practice. So how’s the new Micro$oft home page fare…

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Just a quick note to warn that there’s a new variant of phishing emails going around.

It seems they’ve moved on from Banks to HM Revenue & Customs. Emails are being sent out supposedly from “HMRC Premier Services” informing you that you’re eligible for a tax rebate of £70. They direct you to a web site where you enter your National Insurance number, tax code, name and address and debit or credit card and they’ll refund it directly to your credit card account.

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As mentioned in Google Page Creator Beta I said I was going to be part of the Beta testing program and promised to post some of my conclusions. It’s taken me longer than anticipated with a couple of bits of work and some huge hosting and server issues which have kept me off here for a month but here are my thoughts…..

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Recent Projects

I’ve recently been testing e-commerce software for ease of setup and customisation and the ease of use for the end user to maintain their shop.  More of that will come in a later post.

Having carried out that project I’m proud to say I’ve been invited to join the Google Page Creator Beta testing program to help them test out the features, functionality, ease of use, standards compliance and accessibility issues before public release.

Google Page Creator will be an online tool to make it easier for people to create and publish their own web sites.   Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting new statistic & another boost to those looking to build a site for their business-and indeed an big incentive for those who hadn’t been looking to start thinking seriously about an online prescence.

Internet advertising grew almost two-thirds last year & was the only advertising medium to record positive growth in the UK.  Total UK online advertising spend for 2005 has surpassed all initial expectations, growing a massive 65 % from around £825million to £1.3billion.

Internet advertising’s market share is now up to 7.8% & could break the £2billion barrier in 2006 according to Guy Philipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau’s bi-annual study which is carried out in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).  The online advertising market would be bigger than adverts placed in the national press for the first time if this “real possibility” is achieved. 
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I’ve been meaning to comment on this but have only just got round to it-I had an opportunity to redesign the site a bit and to integrate some new systems with Wordpress 2.0.2-both of which are on a test bed now-more news on that to come when I get back from a weekend in Oslo.

In the meantime the British Retail Consortium gave the following press release….- British Retail Consortium - - News                          

“RSM FEBRUARY 2006: SAME AGAIN: FLAT SALES AND RISING COSTS
March 7, 2006
Retail sales in the UK

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